Beware of bonds

The website DailyFinance.com has an article by investment adviser and author Daniel Solin today advising investors to get out of the stock market and buy bonds.

This is frightening advice.

Even though it's true that there's no way to know if the stock market will go up or down from here, it's dead certain that bonds will go down.

Why?

Because when interest rates go up, the value of existing bonds with lower rates goes down.

So even if your bond, or bond fund, is paying a good rate of return, the new bonds will be paying a better one.

That means investors who buy bonds on the secondary market will pay less for the ones you own, and that translates to a loss of principal.

Let's say you invest $10,000 in a bond fund that has a terrific track record, and then interest rates go up.

You're going to open your statement at the end of the quarter and see that your $10,000 is worth less than $10,000. How much less? Well, that depends on how much interest rates have gone up, and how much money the mutual fund company sucked out of your investment for sales charges and expenses.

Of course, if interest rates go down, and the bonds in your fund are paying a higher interest rate than the new bonds coming out, your fund will go up in value because investors will pay more for old bonds with higher rates.

But when you look at where interest rates are right now, it's hard to see how they could go any lower.

The next move is most likely up, not down.

And that means it's a TERRIBLE time to buy bonds. You're probably buying at the all-time high. Unless you're prepared to hold that investment for a very, very long time, and you don't mind opening HORRIFYING statements every quarter in the meantime, DON'T BUY BONDS.

Here's what you want to do with your money, if you have money to invest.

Buy "How to Make Money and Lose Weight" for $9.95 and learn how not to get screwed by people who give investment advice but really make their money by selling you bad investments.

Or just read excerpts online for free. Click here to learn how to save your sanity by dollar-cost averaging into a no-load mutual fund. It's in chapter 1, "How to Make Money."

Bonds. Please. You'd be better off investing in Barry Bonds.


Copyright 2010

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Valerie Bertinelli's weight loss tip

Valerie Bertinelli spoke to That's Fit about her secret for maintaining her 40 pound weight loss.

"I run most days of the week," the actress said, "about 5 to 8 miles a pop, sometimes with my trainer."

As much as I respect the former "One Day at a Time" star's decision to enlist in the U.S. Army, I feel compelled to offer this advice for everyone else:

You don't have to exercise to lose weight or maintain your weight.

Really, it's true.

Now, if you want to exercise, go right ahead. If you enjoy running, or even if you run and you don't enjoy it, more power to you.

But it's just flat-out depressing to read that the secret of somebody's diet is a workout routine befitting an Army Ranger.

Losing or maintaining weight is all about math. You have to burn more calories than you consume, or you have to consume fewer calories than you burn. Most exercise, like walking on a treadmill for twenty minutes, doesn't burn enough calories to offset a chocolate chip cookie.

If you count calories, honestly and accurately, you can lose weight or keep it off without exercising.

The secret is to know how many calories your body burns when it's just going about its normal daily activities.

Here's another secret: Google "calorie requirement calculator" and when you find one, plug in your honest numbers. When the calculator asks for your activity level, tell it you're sedentary.

Hey, it's just you and the calculator. Who's gonna know?

The calorie requirement calculator will tell you approximately how many calories your body burns in a day. The number will vary based on your gender, age, height and weight as well as activity level.

If you count calories accurately and stay under that number, you can sit in a La-Z-Boy chair and watch soap operas all day and still lose weight.

So if you don't feel like running 5 to 8 miles a day (dear God), don't be discouraged. And if you don't want to spend your money on Jenny Craig food, that's okay too.

Personally, I like the SmartOnes frozen entrees from the supermarket. (This isn't a paid endorsement, no free products have changed hands.)

For tips on making calorie counting easier and other genuinely helpful information (no running shoes needed), pick up How to Make Money and Lose Weight: A simple guide for everyone. You can get it at Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com and other online booksellers, or ask for it at any bookstore.

At $9.95, it's the perfect after-Christmas gift to yourself.

Five to eight miles a day. Please.

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Cheating on Omaha Steaks

Do you get daily e-mails from Omaha Steaks, or is it just me?

Seems like a day doesn't go by without another limited-time today-only offer from Omaha Steaks for some fabulous assortment of irresistibly delicious food at a price so low you can't help but click it.

Or maybe it's just me.

So far, I have not ordered anything.

Something on the web site always talks me out of it. The steaks are too small to serve to guests. The shipping cost outweighs the price discount. The special Private Reserve section on the web site makes me wonder if the ordinary Omaha Steaks are no better than the beef in the local supermarket. The calories in the free side dishes are more than I want to consume in a day. They sell pet food?

But they almost got me this week. There was a free shipping offer, and a box of free sirloin steaks, and a pretty good deal on an assortment that wasn't padded out with hot dogs and cheesy potatoes. They even talked me into loading my cart with one of their upsell items, a caramel apple pastry dessert that just looked too good to be legal.

By this point the web site had made me so hungry for a steak that instead of ordering the frozen assortment, I got in the car and went to the supermarket.

On the way to the checkout line I happened to go through one of the frozen food aisles, and it happened to be the frozen food aisle where the frozen desserts happened to be.

I wasn't looking for them, honest.

What do you think I saw there. A frozen caramel apple pastry dessert from the "Culinary Circle" brand, which apparently is the house brand of Albertson's and Jewel-Osco.

Turns out it's made by a company called Chudleigh's, which supplies the identical product to Omaha Steaks. Chudleigh's calls it a "caramel apple blossom." Omaha Steaks calls it "caramel apple tartlet."

I bought it.

It was out-of-this-world good.

Now, if you're counting calories, you should know that this is not a low-calorie food. Each pastry is about 360 calories. I cut it in half and had it for dessert on two consecutive days. It's bikini season, you know.

Here's a link to the stores that carry Chudleigh's products.

(Neither the website operator nor the writer has received any promotional consideration or compensation for this post.)


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The Italian Chandelier Diet

There's a joke e-mail going around that lists the number of calories burned by different types of -- let's call it adult activity (this is a family-friendly blog). I don't want to go into too much detail here, but apparently if you do the Italian chandelier at the age of sixty and find the G-spot, you can eat an entire cheesecake without gaining weight.

No wonder people sign up for those AARP cruises. Shuffleboard is just a cover story.

If you've ever tried to lose weight by exercising, you've probably already discovered that it's a big lie designed to sell workout machines and gym memberships. Fitness for health is a fine idea, but if you want to look good in a swimsuit it's not enough to get you there.

The most frustrating thing about exercising is that the same activity burns fewer and fewer calories as you lose weight. This helps explain the "plateau" phenomenon. You can go on a diet and start exercising and lose, let's say, five pounds in a week. Then, without changing anything, you'll lose three pounds in a week. Then one pound. Then, nothing.

The less you weigh, the fewer calories your body burns doing exactly the same thing.

The good news is that you can lose weight without exercising at all. Once you figure out how many calories your body burns just doing what you normally do, you can lose a pound every week by eating 500 calories a day less than that.

For the purposes of weight loss, it doesn't matter what you eat or when. As long as you eat 500 calories a day less than you burn, you can make it up as you go along and still lose a pound a week, every week.

Don't tell anybody that's what you're doing. Tell them it's some complicated diet that sounds like a biological weapons program in Iran. That's what they want to hear. Anyway, it's none of their business how you're losing weight.

Tell them you're doing the Italian chandelier.

Let them wonder how you lost twenty pounds changing light bulbs.

If you'd like more information on how to find out how many calories your body burns and how you can make calorie-counting less of a pain, pick up my book, "How to Make Money and Lose Weight." It's all in there.


© 2009

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Let's cut gym class!

Time magazine has a story this week by John Cloud about new studies which refute the widely-held belief that kids who take physical education classes in school are more fit than kids who don't.

Researchers from the Peninsula Medical School in the United Kingdom presented their findings last week in Amsterdam at the European Congress on Obesity. After "a painstaking study of physical activity in 206 children ages 7 to 11 from three schools in and around Plymouth, on the southern coast of England," the researchers discovered that "no matter how much P.E. they got during school hours, by the end of the day, the kids from the three schools had moved around about the same amount, at about the same intensity."

It turns out that the kids who had been required to take an average of 9.2 hours a week of gym class didn't run around much after school, while the kids who were in physical education class for just two or three hours a week were much more likely to engage in physical activities after 3:00 p.m.

In the final analysis, all the kids got about the same amount of exercise.

"The findings are remarkable," Time magazine declared.

In another study, published in the International Journal of Pediatric Obesity, researchers at the University of Exeter tracked 47 boys, ages 8 to 10, and found that kids in structured exercise programs were no more fit than kids who just did the normal things kids do. The researchers said kids should be told to go out and play, but there was no advantage to pushing them into organized P.E. programs or sports teams.

The studies are a pretty strong argument for using the valuable school hours to teach kids things they won't figure out on their own, like reading and math.

As you know if you've read "How to Make Money and Lose Weight," reading is the only skill you need to make money, and math is the only skill you need to lose weight.

Then again, I'll always treasure the memories of P.E. class.

That was sarcastic, if you couldn't tell.

Mango Tilapia

Here's another great recipe for a healthy, low-calorie dinner that takes ten minutes from the freezer to the table. (If you've never cut up a mango before, see below for tips.)

Mango Tilapia

Ingredients:
2 frozen Tilapia filets, about 4 oz. each
1 fresh mango, peeled and sliced thinly
2 Tablespoons white wine
2 teaspoons brown sugar
Salt, pepper, garlic powder

Place the frozen fish filets in a single layer in a shallow, microwave-safe baking dish or pie plate. Pour the wine over them and season with salt, pepper and garlic powder. Cover the filets with a layer of mango slices and sprinkle with brown sugar.

Cover the baking dish loosely with wax paper and microwave for 4 minutes on high. Then check the fish for doneness. It should be white and cooked through, not pink and raw. If needed, cook it for an additional 30 seconds at a time until it's just done. (Overcooking will dry it out.)

Makes two servings of about 183 calories each, or one serving of 366 calories.

If you missed the Tilapia with Fresh Salsa recipe last week, click here to get it.

How to cut up a mango

This is a mango:



Inside, there's a pit that's roughly the size and shape of a deck of playing cards. Stand the mango up on end and cut the sides off, like this:



Then use a vegetable peeler to take the peel off the pieces, place the pieces flat side down on a cutting board, and cut them into thin slices.

Don't peel the mango before you cut it away from the pit. It will be too slippery to handle and you might cut yourself instead of the fruit.

Copyright 2009

Kirstie Alley's yo-yo diet

You have to feel for Kirstie Alley. She worked so hard to lose 75 pounds as a Jenny Craig spokesperson, and now she has admitted to People magazine that she put it all back, and more.

"For seven months I was a vegetarian, and I can't tell you how much weight I gained being a vegetarian!" she said.

Eighty-three pounds.



The actress blamed it on eating too much bread and too many cheese enchiladas, but actually, the yo-yo diet phenomenon is real and there's a reason it's so aggravatingly easy to gain weight after you lose it.

The less you weigh, the fewer calories your body burns. At your old weight, an hour on the treadmill burned a lot more calories than it does at your new, lighter weight. So even if you eat the same diet that kept your weight stable before, at your new, lighter weight it's going to make you gain weight.

Every week. Like clockwork.

So, if it's any consolation, it's not all your fault.

You can read more about the miserable phenomenon of the yo-yo diet in Part 2, Chapter 12 ("Why You Yo-Yo") of "How to Make Money and Lose Weight."